Oct. 17, 2005

PHILADELPHIA - The Saint Joseph's men's rowing team opened the 2005-06 racing season this past weekend on the Schuylkill River with the Navy Day Regatta. After a week of solid rain the Hawks were treated to a beautiful sunny day with variable winds. The SJU Men boated 10 shells for racing with a large percentage of the team rowing twice.

Top honors on the day went to the Freshmen Lightweights who took third place in the Novice 8 event rowing as SJU B. The Freshmen Heavyweights (SJU A) weren't too far behind finishing in 5th, and about 13 seconds off of the lightweight shell.

Asked if he was surprised by the result of the "B" boat defeating the "A" boat Coach Dan Goettner said, "No, not really. We have a great group of freshmen recruits. I think that the lightweight guys came into the season in better shape than the heavyweights, and that made all the difference today."

On the varsity side, SJU finished 7th of 17 in the Varsity 4, 5th and 6th in the Lightweight 4, 3rd in the JV 8, 4th, 5th and 6th in the Dad Vail 8, and 8th of 18 in the College 8. Asked about the performance of the team Coach Hill responded, "We were right where we planned to be."

"We finished in the middle of the pack today in the varsity events, but I am not too surprised by that. Our plan was to train through the Navy Day Regatta in preparation for the Head of Charles and the Head of the Schuylkill. We intentionally rowed a lower rate than all our competition in order to reinforce the technique work we've been doing all Fall. We viewed this race as just another practice and I think the results reflect that. We are confident that our emphasis on technique throughout the Fall will payoff for us during the Spring Championship Season. The fact that almost our entire team raced twice today verifies our feeling that this was an opportunity for a good workout and not a Championship race. I expect that when we set line-ups and bring the rate up to match our competition that we'll fair much better at those regattas."

The race of the day for the varsity was the Dad Vail 8, where SJU entered three shells. "We threw together line-ups on Saturday morning and mixed a bunch of freshman in with guys from our 2V, 3V, and lightweight boats", said 4th-year assistant Paul Mullin. "We thought the "A" boat would be the fastest shell because there were more varsity guys in that shell, followed by the "B" boat and the "C" boat. But the A boat never found their rhythm and the B and C boat guys wanted to prove they should have been in the A boat. The results ended up with the B boat having the fastest time folllowed closely by the C boat (1.1 sec. back) with the A boat in third, another 7.6 sec. back. It was fun watching these guys try to beat-up on each other all the way down the river".

Next up for the Hawks is the Head of the Charles in Boston, Mass. on the weekend of October 22nd - 23rd. The "Charles" is the largest fall race and features some of the best college programs in the country as well as the National Teams from Italy, Germany and Canada plus defending Champ Cambridge University. The Hawks will look to place among the top colleges in three events, the Championship 8, the Collegiate 8 and the Championship 4.